The blog site for PPM practitioners and stakeholders across the enterprise

Friday Feb 07, 2014

Maintaining and constructing new facilities to support a
modern education and research institution requires a commitment to continuous
improvements and tight management of complex project portfolios. So to improve
project visibility and implement better financial controls for capital projects
totaling US$900 million, the University of Utah in Salt Lake City replaced its
in-house database for tracking construction projects with the cloud-based Oracle’s Primavera Unifier
project management system. The result: the university recently completed two
large-scale projects on or before their deadlines at a total of US$11.5 million
under budget. Paul Bender, Oracle’s director of public administration strategy,
explains how the university achieved these impressive outcomes.

Q: One of the projects was the 156,000 square
foot Huntsman Cancer Center Phase IIB expansion. What was the impact on that
project of having improved financial controls and better collaboration?
A: That project came in two months early and US$9 million under budget. The
university attributes a good portion of the savings in time and cost to the
project management system. The solution helped school officials reduce the
number of electronic RFIs required. It also shortened workflow response times
among project team members from a previous maximum of eight weeks to a few
hours. In addition, officials benefitted from the elimination of a significant
volume of paperwork. The system also helped external partners, including more
than 90 consultants and contractors, collaborate more effectively through
access to the system for day-to-day project management.

Read the full Q&A here and discover how
organizations using Primavera Unifier have the tools necessary to maintain
fiscal discipline in day-to-day activities.